There are 4 middle schools in our local school system. In the past, each had a big “Lewis and Clark” day at their school for 8^th grade. We were not involved, but had heard about it. This year, the teachers decided to change topics to “Civil War.” They approached us to find out what related resources we have.

We’ve offered them our facility to use (having the advantage of doing set-up once for the week, rather than 4 days in a row at 4 different locations), and we’re assisting with some of the planning. Museum staff will teach several of the mini-sessions, and we also used our contacts to help find other presenters for the program. In May, for 4 days in a row we will be visited by the entire 8^th grade of one school for Civil War day.

 

Obviously we were fortunate that the teachers came to us, and were already open to collaboration. Whatever the museum offers needs to match the needs (and logistic realities) of the teachers.

 

Good luck!

 

An idea, which I can’t say how well it would work, might be to make the middle/high school teachers aware of what primary resources you have at your facility, and then help them help the students incorporate these sources into research or other learning. Here, we have the challenge that local history is only specifically mentioned in the curriculum, in 3^rd (formerly 4^th) grade!

 

Another idea is to hook into teachers helping students with independent History Day projects, who might be able to use your collections/site in their work.